Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday January 21, 2010 @01:48PM
from the don't-stand-underneath-when-they-fly-by dept.

goldaryn writes "Word from the BBC today is that Europe's biggest space company is seeking partners to help get a satellite-based solar power trial into orbit:
'EADS Astrium says the satellite system would collect the Sun's energy and transmit it to Earth via an infrared laser, to provide electricity. Space solar power has been talked about for more than 30 years as an attractive concept because it would be 'clean, inexhaustible, and available 24 hours a day.' However, there have always been question marks over its cost, efficiency and safety. But Astrium believes the technology is close to proving its maturity.'"

HD output? Really?I never poked around very much but for me XBMC only ever produced a bog-standard 480i signal. How did it push 1080p over component cables? Was there an xbox with digital out that I missed?

I know that before anyone discovered keyboard-and-mouse a lot of people were playing Doom with the gravis gamepad. IIRC it was Thresh who popularized pwning n00bs with WASD and since then nobody even thinks of playing a PC shooter with a joystick.

Where were you stationed? TCOM gives me (reliably) 16 down/3 up right now. Kabel BW has a 32/6 package I think, and I know that's also consistent.This to me is way better than anything I ever got from Comcast, Verizon, Cox, etc.

In my opinion there is very little to "doing IT" beyond a series of low-level to mid-level jobs: helpdesking, laying cable, basic administration, etc. It's not clear to me that there is a way for you to gain experience by doing new tasks or to move up into management, even project management.

In your position, it sounds like you need to do more education outside of work--get into architecture and engineering and work your way up into consulting gigs. Or drop $3k of your own money to get a cert (you can consider this an investment). Very few companies seem to bother with education benefits (minimal investment in employees usually equates to high turnover and is a sign of a crap working environment IMO).

As for dream jobs, I work in network security. I started on the lowest of low rungs and made sure that everyone knew I was the reason why our investigations succeeded...I wrote whitepapers and I got as much customer facetime as possible. Along the way I was lucky enough to get some certs which are good for getting your foot in the door with HR but no replacement for hands-on. Now I'm doing consulting and the pay and benefits are really good, but I'm not sure I would call this a "dream job."